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Free CPD coming up!
23 Things for Professional Development is a free online programme open to information professionals at all stages of their career, in all types of role, and anywhere across the world.

Inspired by the 23 Things programmes for social media, this new programme will consist of a mixture of social media "Things" and "Things" to do with professional development. The programme starts on 20 June and will run until early October 2011.

Each week the CPD23 blog will be updated with details of the next thing to be explored. Catch up weeks and reflection weeks are built into the programme, so it's not a problem if you’re going to be away for a week or two!

Please do spread the word to any friends, colleagues, or groups that might be interested: please pass on this message and link to http://cpd23.blogspot.com. If you’re on Twitter follow @cpd23 and tweet with the hashtag #cpd23.

Thursday, 26 May 2011

To sign up to participate, all you need to do is to register your blog with this website. Most people will do this as part of Thing 2, but I hear there are some people eagerly asking to register already (great!)

If you already have a blog and would like to register now, please fill out the form below.

If you don't already have a blog, that's ok too - the very first thing we'll look at is how to set up your own blog, and we'll take it from there.

Friday, 20 May 2011

So what is '23 Things' anyway?
23 Things is a self-directed course aimed at introducing you to a range of tools that could help your personal and professional development as a librarian, information professional or something else. Each week, we'll write about one or more tool from our list of 23 things and invite you to try it out and/or reflect on how it could help your professional development. Some of the tasks will be practical Things for you to try out straight away, and some of them will be less immediate: ideas to try in the future, or things you can start working towards now and realise in due course or when opportunity arises!

Who's it for?
23 Things for Professional Development is for anyone who thinks they might benefit from it. You don't have to be a qualified anything, you don't have to work in a particular sector or location, you don't have to be in work, you don't have to be at library school... If you think you can learn from this then please take part!

How do I take part?
To take part, you'll need to set up your own blog (don't panic - that'll be explained in the first Thing!), register it with us (we'll explain that too) and use it to reflect on each Thing that we cover. If you already have a blog, you can used that to participate cpd23: no need to start a new one (unless you want to).

What if I need help?
Then please ask us! We'll be trying to give very clear instructions on the technical aspects of each Thing, but if anything's unclear then please comment on the blog or tweet @cpd23 and we'll try and help out. We're hoping that a wide spectrum of people will be taking part, so you can also ask fellow participants for assistance and make the most of their knowledge too. This programme is all about learning from each other, so don't be afraid to ask people questions or to answer them!

Thursday, 19 May 2011

Now that we know what the 23 Things will be, we're moving on to planning the launch!

The plan is to launch the programme online, because it will be open to information professionals at all levels, potentially based anywhere. We're now looking for suggestions - what do you think an online launch should look like? So far we've got:

Hit the mailing lists

Have a live #cpd23 chat on Twitter

Possibly local real life meet-ups, feeding into the Twitter discussion

Guest posts on blogs (so far SLA Europe, CILIP, LISNPN - thanks!)

Anything else? We'll keep updating this main blog post with ideas as they come in, either in the comments here or on Twitter using #cpd23.

Monday, 16 May 2011

Here are the Things that we will be exploring during the 23 Things for Professional Development course this summer. There is real a mixture of stuff: some web 2.0 and/or social media gadgets and gizmos, and some ways of developing your career by more 'traditional', less technology-focussed, means. Throughout the programme will be emphasising how these Things can help your professional development, although you're likely to find lots of tools useful in other ways, too!

The Plan

Week 1 (20th June) - Blogging

Thing 1: Create your own blog, write about what you hope to get out of the programme. (If you already have a blog, then you're welcome to use that.)

Thing 2: Explore other blogs and get to know some of the other cpd23-ers.